Rocker Panel Modification and/or Replacement

lol... when we meet up we can talk about that!

 

Updating this post. I ended up deciding to use sheet metal, cut and fit and tack into place with a welder (rather than try to buy existing rockers from a parts vehicle, or also rather than rectangular tubing). Now that I've been done the job I figured it would be good to help other people who might look through this thread some day to see what got done. Looking back on it all I now KNOW that the mentality of removing rockers from an existing vehicle and swapping them onto mine wouldn't have really been feasible. I'm so used to doing DIY projects that involve unbolting a set part and bolting on a replacement. This rocker panel job couldn't have been anything like that and was more of a work of art (not speaking highly of my skills, just the kinds of skill needed for this type of repair and body work in general). After chopping out the bad stuff I realized I didn't have much structural strength left to weld any kind of heavy rectangular tubing in place. It just basically HAD to come down to sheet metal and fabrication. A family friend had a pile of sheet metal and the wife and kids all had dinner and fun while me and him were out cutting and tacking for the afternoon. I drove it home in basic framed out metal and proceeded to do the rest of the job in my own garage.

FOR A STEP BY STEP DESCRIPTION of the following pictures and the tools/materials used, see a few more posts below for that. Sorry but I cranked out these pictures yesterday without any kind of description.

 

Looks good.
Nice job keeping it on the road.

 

the black looks great on the red

 

Thanks... just a little added protection to the refurbished rockers so I hopefully have less chance of ever messing with them depending on how long I keep this truck.

Oh, I should probably list some of the materials and methods used in case people are looking at this some day for help planning their own repairs.

Here's a play by play using the pics above as a guide:
* Basic thin cut-off wheel on my cheapo 4.5" Harbor Freight $25 angle grinder to cut the rockers open, leaving a lip of healthy metal to reattach and also not bugger up the clearance of the doors.
* Incidentally... I know for healthy metal one should grind to expose the spot welds, use a spot weld bit or drill to remove those and then the rocker panel should lift nicely off the joined pieces. My anus... This crap was so rusted beyond all things good and lovely that it was just easier to hack away. An enormous percentage of the "rocker reinforcer" piece was so badly corroded it just needed to be cut out. Once again, I would have never been able to just snag inner and outer rockers off a parts truck and been able to just place them on mine. My truck was TRASHED by rust.
* Assorted cutting and sanding stuff to get rusty crud back to bare metal (sanding disc on angle grinder, wire brushes on my cordless drill, die grinder on my air compressor, actual sandpaper, etc.)
* Lots of air blasting with the compressor to get the rusty debris out.
* (Trip to the optometrist to remove the corneal foreign body of rusty grit that embedded in my eyeball!!! Use your eye protection... I was being a good boy and the ONE random blast without the face shield I was like "I'll be OK..." yeah, rusty crud fell in.)
* Then washed all exposed junk with good ol' soapy wudder (shout out to Chris Fix on YouTube) and a toilet brush (some sharp stuff up in there!). Wanted all road salt chemicals out of that body.
* CRC Rust Converted painted on with a small brush, onto all the surfaces I grinded back to bare metal, 2 coats.
* Rustoleum self etch primer spray on all the same surfaces, 2 coats. Sorry, not being a true mechanic or body shop I just used stuff like this rather than official 2K primer (though in hindsight I probably should have sucked it up and done that on this project and also the bed project I competed after the rockers were done).
* Of to the friend I mentioned for our family dinner/work day.
* Not being a mechanic I don't really know gauge of metals. I'd say that the sheet metal we used was at least as thick as the OE Toyota body metal, maybe a touch thicker?
* Big 'ol tin snips, vice, hammer to cut/shape numerous pieces to size and tack them in place to the good edges of my exposed metal.
* His welder is nicer than mine, Argon gas with a 0.030 solid MIG wire. Much easier to see the weld puddle and control it than the basic flux core wire I used at home for the rest of the job (Auto Arc 130 gassless flux core MIG welder using basic 115V household current , and INE brand 0.030 gauge flux core wire).
* Wish I had finished building the YouTube "King of Random" spot welder (I am half way through that project but put it down) to try on the bottom row of the rockers where the inner and outer pieces meet. Just used a drill to get through one side and then weld from the inside out to pile up a spot weld in those numerous spots you see in the pics. I was being too cheap to go rend a spot welder somewhere and nobody I knew had one.
* Cut off the bottom line with the angle grinder to make everything flush.
* Coated the entirety of the new sheet metal and the welds on all surfaces (inner and outer rockers) with the CRC rust converter (some may fault me for that, but again I'm no body mechanic and realize now I should have just sucked it up and gone over to Eastwood (who has a location the next town over from me!!!) for some real body person's chemicals and primers) and then some more Rustoleum self etch. It was at this point I realized one should only put the next chemical (USC All Metal) over "2K" primers and I had to google what a 2K primer was. Oops... sanded down the Rustoleum as best I could to have some better adhesion for the USC All Metal.
*2-4 layers in areas of USC All Metal (NOT Bondo or other porous body fillers), sanding down between layers to get smoother and smoother and try to re-create the original curvatures of the rocker panel on the outer surfaces.
* BTW... I went through about 1 & 1/2 quart size cans of that on the job. (NOBODY order from the jerks at Toolsid.com with their false advertising and not making good on it for me)
* Couple more coats of primer over the top of the finished filler job, switched to a different one of the myriad of Rustoleum primer types (confusing how many different kinds of primer there are).
* Basic 3M brand blue painter tape from Lowes, nothing special, no fancy automotive branded tape. Worked acceptably for me in the line it created with the bedliner.
* Then finished up with the top coat being Plastikote brand bed liner (I liked the review "Project Farm" on YouTube did for bed liners and this one seemed to fit the bill better than Herculiner, though we'll see over time?). I just followed the instructions on the can. Bought two of the 1 gallon kits figuring I'd go through a lot with the rockers and the bed refurbishing project I would also be doing. I BARELY touched the second gallon for both projects! So, if you don't know how much to buy, 1 gallon goes a long way on a Tacoma. Probably like 3 coats on the bed since I did 2 coats on the bed plus 3 coats on the rocker panel job.
* Hindsight. I'd suggest to remove the painter tape a couple hours after laying down the bedliner to get the best line. I tried that with the final touches on my bed replacement job the lines were even better than when I removed the tape the next day for the rocker job.


If you liked my writeup here, check out the post for the bed replacement I did too. Be kind in the comments since I'm just an average joe with zero formal training in the automotive industry, just a tenacious DIY'er.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...-swap-and-frame-cleanup.636618/#post-21920610

 

It's real easy to be kind in the comments when your work looks great and you used high quality materials, great job hombre
That rocker panel work isn't the easiest of projects, looks good man

 

It failed PA inspection this summer due to rust (and only rust... it runs great otherwise and I keep it mechanically sound). I got PO'd of hearing people tell me this truck was totalled from the rust and not to put good money on bad by doing anything more with it. As I mentioned at the start of the thread, I got real estimates from a couple local shops. By the time I would have had someone do the bed itself as well as paint afterwards, it was more realistically going to be about $2500-4000 in work if I'd have paid someone to do it for me. I just couldn't do it. I layed down a bunch of money buying this truck in 2016, cash, paying what a used car dealer would charge and thinking that if it came from a "dealer" it must be sound enough to be worth the price rather than a private party deal (and on top of that I "bargained them down" by $2000 anyway). I should have only paid about $3-4K on this truck seeing all the crap I've been through on it, but that's all a different story. So I just felt literally robbed by now if I'd have had to scrap it or sell it to someone for parts and walk away with at best a couple thousand dollars. So I just went and did it all myself. $360 for the used bed, $300 for the bed red paint job, and a couple hundred in materials/supplies/chemicals for doing the work myself. Let's pray the engine/tranny/drivetrain/frame keep going for a few more years!

Gotta do the tailgate still, gonna take a break for a few months or the wife will kill me! Anyone want to sell me one for cheap? Radiant Red please. Or else the next DIY thread will be the tailgate cleanup thread.

 

how many miles are on your truck, i can't recall if you mentioned somewhere already or not?

i am located on the fringe outskirts of rusty belt so am having some similar issues currently

i like the black aluminum oxide media (other than clogging my blast gun) but I am going to probably need 500 lb of the stuff

 

206K miles on it. I didn't do much blasting on the rocker panel job, but did on my bed job. But I only went through about 15lbs of it (Aluminum Oxide, of a box of 50lbs). I'd love a nicer blaster. I have the el-cheapo $20 siphon feed type I just hook to my compressor air tube. Very moody.

 

i have gone through 50 lb of aluminum oxide and 50 lb of glass bead media so far for what seems only a few feet of progress
also have a blast from bucket kit from Eastwood and some HF gun that only holds a Qt of media, and it empties very quickly on me

 

yikes. Most of my work I hit with the angle grinder sander disc first, then the sanding disc for my cordless drill, then the wire brush, and THEN the sandblaster for the fine tune last of it all. Could you save on blast media that way?

 

perhaps, i don't really know!
i am an amateur at this going in with no proper tools, equipment or experience
trying to save my 1 owner truck on a 'professional' quoted $10k bill to modify this frame to something more 'durable'

 

I've been a licensed body man for over 30 years. I applaud the work you did. Most diy work doesn't turn out like yours. If I were you, I would drill some holes in the bottom of the rocker and pump some under coating in there. Bare steel and fluctuating temperatures make for rust. Because you didnt weld solid..... re: your pictures, the moisture will find the easiest way out. That will end up being the space between the welds. Body fill wont hold the moisture in. Fibreglass would have held up longer. But get it under coated to prolong your work. Good job

 

Thanks man! Very very kind. I did try to seal that underside seam quite literally with the metal filler product before the final coats of the bedliner. So it doesn't "look" like I have any visible holes to the naked eye (other than humidity of the general air codensating inside there?) I do still have access ports to the rocker by way of the factory plastic covered plug hole on the front and rear of the cabin. Otherwise its sealed up like like a nun at this point. Was pondering taking the gallon of Fluid Film I have and the long flexible wand I got for it, and shoving it down both those holes for an application of the entire inside surfaces. I have the body schutz gun for that (use that for 3M Body Schutz on the underside of the cabin and bed). Think that is acceptable, or would you still say the bedliner (I have a lot left)? Or maybe even the POR15 I still have left?

 

Well, I've got the same problem @testelle. Your solution still seems to be the best option available, so I guess I have finally found the project where I learn how to weld!

How has your repair held up over the past 3 years? Any sage wisdom if you had to do it all over again?




Passenger side still looks clean.

 

So far... pretty good. The left rocker panel has some rusty color peeking through the body filler in some places. So, the cancer is probably in there for sure. BUT... I finished that job 3 years ago without tending to the bashed in rusted out body mount that was in front of the left rocker. So, I still had access for water/salt to get into my newly done rocker. I just fabbed up a new body mount myself with all my new-found welding skills in October and that side is fully sealed up at this point. A bit too late though, as I figure, since as I mentioned I see some rust evidence on this left rocker. The right rocker is holding strong. Just a touch of rusty edges at the bottom where it is "pinched" together at the seam. I figure that spot's to be expected.

All in all I'm pleased.

 

Great job coming up with a solution, and posting it, looks great. You just saved me a bunch of time researching what to do, thank you!!! Going to be very helpful for my summer project on this truck. I just got an 01 extended cab 4wd v6, 212k miles, runs great, needs a few things this being one of them but overall great truck for the running around that I need.

 

Thanks for the long write up. I need to do something similar with my son's truck. You say that there is a touch of rust at the edges where two pieces of metal are pinched together. Do you know what kind of metal you used and is there a choice like galvanized that wouldn't have rusted?

I don't know how to weld so I am considering rivets and JB Weld. I've had good luck with JB Weld on a couple of projects. Did you ever consider that route? Thanks